the garden of emeralds

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Accord was originally named Port Jackson when it was founded and it is believed it was changed at the residents’ requests. Most of Accord’s residents are farmers and truckers. Accord has only over 500 residents today.

Gyékényes is a Hungarian town which lies right on the border between Hungary and Croatia. The area on which Gyékényes stands has been evidenced to be inhabited since Roman times. Gyékényes is first mentioned in 1380 CE, in which it was property that rotated between many families. In 1600, it was occupied by the Ottomans during the Siege of Nagykanizsa. The town wouldn’t be taken back until 1677 and today it has about 1000 citizens. The exact reason for the amount of abandoned buildings is unknown. The majority of buildings in Gyékényes are in style of Baroque or Neo-Baroque, with a more rural and simplistic appearance than typical Baroque buildings, as are many Baroque buildings in Hungary.

Wauchope (pronounced like ‘walk-up’) first started being settled around 1901, but became a village in 1906. Most of the residents came from England, France, Belgium, or Sweden. The town was named for a General W Wauchope. It had a Catholic, Methodist, and Presbyterian church and cemetery, along with a lumberyard, school, community hall, barbershop, hotel, skating rink, and many other stores. The St Jean Francois Regis Roman Catholic Church is pictured above and has inside of it a pipe organ hand-built by one of the residents, a blacksmith named A Sylvestre. Wauchope has a very well-recorded history and it is believed to be home to about five families today.

The Catholic church can be seen as the farthest building, year unknown <1940

Wauchope, 1947. Again the Catholic church can be seen as the furthest building in the image. Though this image is closer, some buildings have still disappeared.

An old barn in Neidpath; this same barn is a popular subject of stock images for some reason

The same grain elevator from a different angle

The church (farmhouse); it was further outside Neidpath until it was moved more into the inside of the town in 1954

Neidpath was first settled in 1909 but was officially founded in the 1920s with the construction of the railroad. It was named after Neidpath Castle in Scotland. The population peaked before 1930 when it reached about 100 people. It then began to decline and later a fire destroyed the general store and then the school was closed. The last operating businesses in town were the grain elevators, of which there used to be four, but there are only two left today. In 2014, Neidpath had a population of 1 but it now has 0.

A newer church of Bromstead (Carpenter Gothic) appears to still be in use

Bromhead was founded in 1913. Only three years later, a fire swept through Bromhead and destroyed many of its buildings and only a few were rebuilt. Later, a second fire occurred outside the town which drove many of its residents away. It never recovered from the population loss and stayed a small town since the 30s.

Ardath took its name from the British novel Ardath: The Story of a Dead Self by Marie Corelli and earned its money through agriculture, mostly wheat. The Ardath United Church (above) and the town hall were both built in 1912. Ardath began its decline starting in 1919 when a train crashed through one of its grain elevators killing three. A few years later, a fire destroys most of main street causing a large amount of the population to move away. In 1931, a man murders another man believing him to be someone else and then burns down a house in series of dramatic events contributed to Ardath’s downfall.